Snapshots
by whitesakura
Summary: A string of moments. Seto POV. Kaibecest implied.
1. Snapshots 1 to 8

Author Notes: I began this story in 2007 and it's remained incomplete for a long time. I'm not sure when I'll pick this up again, but I wanted to share this with readers. It's a bit of an experimental style, but please enjoy!

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1. Once

And falling in love is the extra creases in your bed sheets after Friday's horror move, the sticky chocolate on your fingers and lips from smores melted in the microwave, the cold breath of winter and the small bundle of warmth that clings to your side with red-patterned mitts. This is falling in love. Love isn't found in ruby lipstick or curves or batted eyelashes, in the bathroom with your pants down and a magazine gripped in one hand. Love is as simple as the small figure that stands by the school gate, kicking despondently until he sees you and smiles.

And falling in love is not supposed to be this, but it is.

2. One-Eighty

Things begin to happen. The candy perpetually stocked in your pantry begins to disappear. The mochi with the red-bean paste is replaced by power bars. The marshmallows and cocoa powder are spirited away never to be seen again. Mokuba's hair gets longer, but now he gels it back, slicked into a pony tail. He picks out his clothes with care. The cell phone you got him for his birthday rings all times of the day and when you pass by his room to yours, you hear him murmuring endearments into the phone.

One day, Mokuba doesn't come home by midnight and you are scared. When he does at two o'clock, you smooth his forehead, rub his back as he throws up in the toilet, and make him drink water. Put him into your bed and watch him all night to make sure he keeps breathing.

In the morning, you set a curfew.

Mokuba cusses you.

You say, you do it out of love.

Mokuba glares at you. At your hand curled over his shoulder. He says you are sick.

3. Sake

You've never gotten drunk before. You hate the taste of alcohol, but you need to do this. So, you let yourself be flattered by the man in the black suit. A fellow overseas, in a business completely unrelated to gaming or technology. No need for favors or mergers or acquisitions, absolutely safe. A promise as empty as the man's smile. Your hand shakes from nervousness. The liquor burns down your throat, makes tears come out of your eyes.

He wipes them away for you.

And seduction is as simple as that.

4. Sex

So that is lust.

5. Flower

And love is as simple as the picture kept in your mother's keepsafe box. The secret that yellows with age.

By now, the men have not agreed with you, so you try women. The ones without make-up or lipstick or curves enhanced with surgery. Without eyelashes, long and glossy with mascara. Those things bring you to another time and you have to move forward. Mokuba comes and goes and he watches with a strange face, the way she fits in your arms. Her petite figure nestled against your side.

She wants children. She says you will make a good father and she watches Mokuba with the type of pride your mother would have, had she lived more than a few hours after his birth.

It is easy to make her smile, with a kind word, a flower in her hair. But you cannot smile back, and in the end, it is kindness that makes you let go.

6. Dream

You are half asleep when you feel long limbs wrap around you and a voice whispering in your ear. In the morning, you wake with a smile and eyes wet with wanting so much for it to be real.

7. Denial

There are many things that people wish for besides love. They are health, family and money. And isn't it more important? To be able to breathe, to have a roof over your head and a full stomach? Isn't it more important that Mokuba doesn't mind lingering around you so much anymore, now that you no longer touch him? Now that he lives at the other end of Domino City.

8. Health

The doctors say it is because you worked too hard. The doctors say it is because you didn't listen to them years ago and took too many bad pills to keep you awake, running diagnostics and shuffling between meetings. It's from forgoing food for work, from trying to keep something safe for that person who doesn't seem to care anymore.

Kaiba-san, they say. If you continue, you will have a heart attack.


	2. Snapshots 9 to 19

Author Notes: I wrote a bit more to the Snapshots series long ago and forgot to upload them. Here are two more installments. Unfortunately, this will likely remain an unfinished work.

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9. Hiatus

You thought Mokuba might be angry, but he takes helm of the corporation without a fuss. It's been a while since you last saw him and you think: he has grown up.

You thank him, the Mokuba with the frighteningly blank eyes that you can no longer read.

For the first time since you were ten years old, you sleep eight hours in a row.

10. America

America is quite strange. Public Relations had told you to go overseas to recuperate, let the stockholders focus on Mokuba and forget that you are ill. Kaiba Corp has opened a few theme parks throughout the country, a string of them in California, a mega-store in New York. In Kansas, you own a farm much to your surprise. Apparently, it was an extra in a contract you signed years ago for spare parts from the factory next door. The land is worn, with a few thin cows. The sky is wide and bright and the air is fresh. No one is looking, so you ask Mokuba through business intermediaries for a few scientists from Kaiba Corp's small, rarely-known agricultural division and a few thousand pounds of fertilizer.

You expect at least a three day wait for an answer.

He sends them the next day, by jet plane.

It's against the rules, but you do a little hoeing while the scientists flutter about and say Kaiba-shacho (even though you've technically stepped down), what will Mokuba and our families think letting you do this?

You tell them to shut up and start sowing grain.

11. Transition

Your hands have blisters. Your cuticles are worn. For the first time, you think you look about as tired as you feel, without the make-up artists and stylist to cover up signs of fatigue. You are still in the prime of your life, but for the first time you feel just about right. The scientists are working on high-yield potatoes by creating a few hybrids. You've already approved a patch of land for experimentation.

The doctors smile when they notice the drop in your blood pressure.

Mokuba sends specialists twice every week.

12. Rival

He smiles like Mokuba.

It's strange, to see that smile on someone else's face. But the young man is bright and quick and eager to please, so you take him under your wing. You teach him about things and he hugs you. It takes a while to get used to it again.

You thank Mokuba for the new staff for your expanding project.

The young man smiles at you, then leans across to look at Mokuba in the vid screen to thank him for the opportunity to work at Kaiba Corp and with you. The man's plaid coat brushes against your chest but you don't move away.

Mokuba notices.

13. Possessive

In Kansas.

"He's mine!" a tipsy Mokuba snarls to the man.

14. Reunion

Mokuba forces you to go back to Japan. He says he is worried about you and he apologizes for being drunk (apparently he had too much on the flight over). The man is left behind in Kansas to continue your work. Mokuba keeps talking. He hasn't talked this much since elementary school, when snowfall shut down the local district for a week and he was cooped up at home watching reruns of Kamen Rider. His hair is shorter now, a more conservative appearance for the board and the public who have their doubts about such a young man taking helm of a corporation with profits in the billions.

Abruptly the talk stops, like a faucet gone dry.

"So…you've been working on potato hybrids?" He inquires.

You stare at the ring on his finger. The words come out thick as paste, but you force a small smile on your face.

"When's the wedding?"

15. Media

Stepping back on Japanese soil is like walking into a familiar den of lions. The cameras flash, blind, and you stand, pose with a small smirk. Saunter slowly into the crowd.

It parts nervously.

The next day, the business newspapers speculate what your return would do to the technological sector. The fashion magazines make fun of your Timberland work boots, and the gossip rags think your heart problems were just a cover-up for a plastic surgery trip to Tahiti. The tan is too telling, they say.

Mokuba has taken over the master bedroom. Your bedroom.

The maids scurry about, apologizing while they ready one of the guest rooms for the night. You stand by the door and watch cotton sheets being spread. Down the hall, garments made of lace and silk, bundled in the girls' hands, are shuffled out and into your old room. Mokuba's fiancée is away, visiting her family.

She returns in three days.

16. Morning

Mokuba buries himself in spreadsheets during breakfast and your fingers itch, wanting a laptop or a pencil. Instead, you cut into your French toast and watch as Mokuba rises. His chair screeches backward.

Before you are halfway through your meal, he is gone.

17. Thought

The project is going well. The young man looks a bit harried on the vid screen and you smirk, tell him he looks like he woke up just five minutes ago. He laughs and you start a little, just like the first time. The sound brings you back to another time and place. It's spring, but you can feel winter's breath on your face, warmth by your side.

The man says he and the staff misses you.

You smile and tell him, he's not getting any more funds and the scientists are not getting any more paid days of vacation.

He smiles back, but his voice is low and somber when he says he is serious.

The vid screen goes blank, but you sit in your chair for a long time.

18. Specter

"Isn't there anything I can do?" You ask Mokuba.

Mokuba doesn't look up from shuffling data into his briefcase. "We'll talk about this later, okay?"

He's out the door before you can answer.

Mokuba doesn't come home. The fiancée, still in Osaka, calls and tells the maids to buy new silverware for the dinner party. The staff comes and goes. With an armful of flowers, one of them tells you Mokuba often stays late at the office, overnight, more than two days in a row, even. Another with a vacuum says the dinner party is for Mokuba's and his fiancée's one-year anniversary.

You try to go out for a walk in the park, but the paparazzi follow your every move outside the compound. You can't even read in peace without the prickling sensation of being watched spreading down your neck.

Dinner alone. The wine is warm down your throat, the candlelight soft.

You think you want to go back to Kansas.

19. Exodus

When she lays her coat and purse on the bed that was once yours, you left Japan five hours ago.


	3. Snapshots 20 to 26

20. Mud

When he meets you after the landing, there's a smudge of dirt across his nose, dust on his overalls. You can't help but laugh.

"You look like a kindergartener who went playing in the mud."

"It was good mud," He smirks.

21. Talk

"I have a little brother," you say. "Sometimes, you remind me of him."

"Well then," he says tersely. "I'll have to make it so he reminds you of me."

22. Dragons

"You're a bit strange," you say at lunch, watching him eat the crust all around his sandwich before biting into the heart of it.

"So says the person with an obsession with dragons," he teases around a mouthful of bologna.

"It's not an obsession," you say, putting down your fork to rub your fingers. Crayon and loose leaf, you can still feel them. "They were a dream, given by someone precious to me."

23. Worry

Mokuba calls you; his voice is shaking. You think he is angry until you hear the hitch in his words that comes when he's fighting tears.

"You're okay. You're okay. You're okay." Mokuba repeats the words over and over, like a mantra, a chanted spell for protection.

"Of course I am," you turn away from your companion and reply soothingly into your phone. "Of course I am."

24. Return

You return with only the shirt off your back, not even taking the time to pack a change of clothes. At the airport, Mokuba dashes forward to embrace you, but all you can remember is the man's face, full of bitterness.

25. Memory

"You shouldn't let yourself be trapped," he says on the tarmac, a tiny strip between sprouting fields of grain. He sounds different from when you first met him, his eyes look old. You no longer see the youthful Mokuba in them, perhaps for a very long time, but something still draws you, stops you from looking away.

"When did you stop smiling?" you ask, forehead wrinkling with worry.

The helicopter blades rotate once. You have to go.

26. Web

Mokuba wants to sleep in your bed.

"But you already do."

No, he says, he wants to sleep with you.

In the guest room, you wonder what Mokuba's fiancée thinks down the hall as Mokuba's limbs tighten around you in sleep.


End file.
